Brennan Manning Quotes

No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

Leaving religious texts open too interpretation is the downfall of religion itself. If it is truly the word of God then there is no room for interpretation; you either take all of it or none. There is no selective belief

When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayer-books, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brains of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of *Thus sayeth the Lord.*

I've grown up in a generation that questions God for setting boundaries. Does He have the right to set boundaries? I've grown up in a generation that thinks where meeting with a God is an ordinary thing.

Most Christians are afraid that people will think for themselves; most atheists are afraid that they won’t.

Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years.

I think the current book [for Christian apologetics] is by Lee Strobel, its called A Case for Christ.

People interpret things through their owns lens, just the way they do the Bible. You can find justification for just about everything in the Bible. I think man has got a great ego when it comes to his God, whatever that is. It just seems to me that someone who wants to take on God's punishment, it just seems a huge egoism to think that he should appoint himself to take care of God's punishments.

Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology, just as we read other books, using our judgment and reason. . . .

I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins.

Religion, it stops people from thinking because they think all the answers are in that one book; it impedes progress; it justifies crazy people. Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.

Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.

Engage with the Bible. Meditate on it day and night. Think and rethink about God's Word. Let it be your guide. Make it your go-to book for questions. Let it be the ultimate authority in your life.

Creation has the truth written all over it - the age of the universe, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough.

When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.

[T]he scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

God gave me this great book to preach from, and if He has put anything in it you think is not fit, go and complain to Him, not to me. I am simply his servant, and if His errand that I am to tell is objectionable, I cannot help it.

People write to me all the time to tell me that "homosexuality is an abomination." They base this on a quote in Leviticus. I think the Bible has proved to be a very mysterious and dangerous document.

One of the problems and the reason why Carolyn [Maloney ] wrote the book, the Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated is that some people think we have made it when we have not and there's much to be done.

I do think there are always ways to create what seem like insurmountable powers, but then suddenly you find their limitations and that's the nature of comic book storytelling - always has been.

Everyone probably thinks that I'm a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I'd rather read a book.

Of his new book, Don says: “It might be the greatest book ever written. I don’t think anybody is going to read a book again after they read my new one. I think God is proud of me. I am going to make a killing off this thing and I’m going to use the money to go to space.

When you say 'Yes' or promise something, you can very easily deceive yourself and others also, as if you had already done what you promised. It is easy to think that by making a promise you have at least done part of what you promised to do, as if the promise itself were something of value. Not at all! In fact, when you do not do what you promise, it is a long way back to the truth.

Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing; and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.